Chapter 104: Buried Under Six Feet of Leverage [Back to Present]

The azure light spilled past the ruined iron jamb, washing over an empty patch of damp, boot-tracked dirt.

Kerwon stopped.

His boots rested two inches from where Fukuro’s heel had scuffed a second ago.

He didn’t turn his head. He tilted his chin up, sniffing the dead-air draft with a slow, deliberate flare of his nostrils.

Snff-hnh.

The smell of cold groundwater and stale iron sweat hung heavy, unmoving.

Kerwon let out a short, wet scoff.

"Rats don’t hold their breath."

Six feet straight up, Fukuro was plastered flat against the dripping lime-mortar ceiling like a wet newt, fingers hooked into narrow masonry gaps.

Shk-t.

A grain of mortar crumbled, dropping past Kerwon’s ear.

Kerwon’s left shoulder twitched... a micro-adjustment, not a spin.

Fukuro didn’t breathe. His lungs felt like crushed tin.

He bit his lip until copper filled his mouth. He’s too tall. He’s going to reach up.

Using his palms and inner thighs, he crab-walked sideways across the curved vault, moving toward the inner room Kerwon had just vacated.

Squeak-skrrt.

Rubber soles of his boots dragging silent against greasy brick.

Skrrr-t.

Kerwon’s heel pivoted on the grit.

The azure light on the wall shrank, pulling back through the ruined iron frame.

Crunch... crunch...

The steps faded toward the main shaft; slower now, dismissive. Like swatting at a gnat that missed.

Inside the vault, Fukuro hung frozen upside down.

His calves burned.

His fingers were locked white into the wet granite.

Drop me. Please drop me. Don’t let him smell my sweat.

A long, shuddering wheeze tore from his ribs.

He didn’t crawl down; he just lost all bone, slumping off the ceiling in a pathetic, wet heap onto the dirt floor.

Thump-slish.

Fukuro curled into a tight ball, knees jammed into his chest, clutching his own ears. He muttered slowly:

"Don’t look back, don’t look back, you tall freak, go rot in your own spot, I hate you, I swear to god I’m never following this giraffe again-"

Scritch.

A tiny, dry claw scratched against a loose bolt behind his ear.

Fukuro’s breath locked. Total silence.

He didn’t leave. He baited me.

Fukuro slammed his face flat into the reeking dirt, throwing his hands over his neck in a pathetic, full-body surrender crawl.

"I didn’t followed the cave lizard! It was attacking me! Ask the rats! Please, Governor Giraffe... I mean S-sir K-k-kerwon..."

He started to pray with his both hand without looking up and quickly said the most important save as he ruined the earlier sentence,

"I had a sick aunt! She’s a healer vampire now, she coughs gravel as medicine---"

Tap.

Something cold, dry, and scaly planted its front feet right on the center of his scalp.

A fat cave-lizard blinked orange eyes against his hair, tilted its flat head, and let out a tiny, wet chrip.

Fukuro froze.

One eye pried open an eighth of an inch against the mud.

Empty dirt. Just the dripping ceiling.

He let out a shaky, wheezing laugh, his shoulders sagging.

"Oh. Just a... just a little..."

His right hand twitched up to brush his hair.

His fingertips hit cold, leathery scales.

Tsk-tsk-tsk.

Fukuro froze again, rethinking. The heavy, greasy pressure of Kerwon’s aura wasn’t there. Just a faint, cold tickle.

He cracked his eyes open.

A pale, fat cave-lizard blinked at him from the tip of his own nose, throat pulsing once.

Thrum.

Fukuro exhaled a ragged, shaky laugh. "You... you little cold-blooded---"

He reached up to brush it off. His fingers hit cold slime once again .

"AAAAAHHHH!"

He threw himself backward, kicking his legs like a flipped beetle, sending a cascade of rusted iron cogs rattling across the floor.

Clack-clatter-skitter!

The lizard darted into a pipe.

Fukuro scrambled to his feet, chest heaving, wiping his hair frantically with his sleeve while glaring at the dark drain.

"Rot in a bucket, you slimy little heart-stopper."

He spun around on his heel.

Before him rose a jagged, six-foot mountain of dead-system scrap... tangled hydraulic hoses, oxidized copper coils and coins, and smashed magnetic plates dripping black grease under the leak.

Fukuro wiped his nose, his voice dropping into a greedy, manic whisper.

"Well. Look what the giraffe left for the scavenger."

Fukuro wiped the grease from his palm onto his trousers.

The dark vault smelled of stale transformer oil and wet copper.

He looked up at the jagged six-foot mound of dead-system debris.

"Nothing is garbage in an unhinged realm when staying alive is the only metric."

He gave a dry, sharp huff.

"Huh. Big elite giraffe governor... you’ll be crawling down here begging to rent a spare coil."

He shoved his crooked round wire-rims up the bridge of his nose with a greasy thumb.

Tink-click.

The loose hinge rattled.

"Survival’s just a puzzle if you’ve actually got a brain."

A sharp, jagged smirk split his face.

He didn’t walk. He hopped on one heel, kicking his right leg straight up behind him- flick-whop... sending the boot spinning into a puddle of rust-water.

He hopped twice more, throwing his left leg high with a frantic, unhinged yelp, heel-locking the second boot off mid-air.

Thud-clack against the brickwork.

Bare-socked feet landed hard on the slick concrete.

Slap-skid.

He launched himself dead-center into the six-foot heap.

K-RASHHH-CLATTER.

A tidal wave of oxidized copper tubing, warped gear plates, and hollow zinc casings erupted outward, raining down across the stone floor with a high, metallic shiver.

Fukuro bounced on top of the pile, knees bent, flinging a heavy brass alternator over his shoulder.

Whump-clink.

He grabbed a handful of tangled magnetic wire and tossed it high into the damp air, laughing a ragged, breathless, manic sound that bounced off the low brick ceiling.

"Reminds me of the old yard," he wheezed, kicking a rusted piston that rolled into the dark.

"Before the sky forgot how to bleed."

From the shadows behind the water pipe:

"Look like a frog without cartoon pants on a Tuesday evening rain."

The voice dropped flat, conversational, and completely unbothered.

Mid-air, knees still tucked, Fukuro didn’t even stop bouncing.

"Frog your a$$ you lizard’s excrement—"

BAM.

He landed straight down on a hollow copper drum that gave a hollow, echoing THOONG, his wire-rim glasses sliding sideways down his nose.

His sock-heel hit the peak of the scrap pile.

Skrrr-thup.

The motion stopped dead.

Not a gradual slow-down... a hard, cartoon-frame snap.

Fukuro’s knees turned to vibrating rubber, knocking together with a rapid, hollow clack-clack-clack.

His round wire-rims slid two inches down his nose.

Behind the glass, his irises shrank to pinpricks, frozen wide and unblinking.

A vertical wave of deep, bruised violet flushed upward from his collar to his hairline, completely draining the skin.

Above his crooked part, three sharp, rigid black stress-lines popped into the air, stiff as drawn ink.

He turned his neck.

Creeeeeeeak.

The voice hadn’t come from the iron door.

It came from the dark alcove where the damp stopped.

Fukuro didn’t fall. He imploded.

Whump-zip.

The six-foot mountain of scrap swallowed him whole with a dry, collapsing shhh-tclack, leaving zero footprint on the grease.

Deep inside the dark hollow of warped copper casings and hollow zinc tubing, he folded backward.

Knees jammed hard against his teeth. Heels tucked tight to his tailbone.

Both palms clamped over his ears, fingers digging into his scalp.

A tight, shuddering snail-shell in the dark.

His voice leaked out through his kneecaps, thin and vibrating like a plucked wire.

"Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry..."

A silhouette detached from the timber framing.

Not walking... dragging. The heels of heavy, unpolished boots ground the grit with a slow, flat skritch... skritch...

The azure residue from Kerwon’s flambeau which he left tugged on the wall outside didn’t reach this far.

Overhead, a single rusted iron grate leaked a weak, vertical stripe of gray street-mud light.

As the figure crossed the beam, the shadow on the wet brick wall didn’t stretch normal.

It distorted- shoulders too broad, spine curved with an unhurried, predatory laziness, and behind one hip, a long, rigid silhouette that wasn’t a sword.

Clink.

A loose copper washer dropped from the ceiling, pinging off the newcomer’s shoulder.

It didn’t roll. It bounced dead.

The figure stopped four feet from the base of the scrap mountain.

The voice came out from the chest; thick, gravel-grated, and pitched low enough to make the loose zinc sheets in the pile vibrate.

"Quiet down in the tin-can."

A pause.

A dry, rasping intake of air that smelled like old iron and cold tallow.

"You’re vibrating the floorboards."

A big long hand entered the gray light.

Long fingers, scarred across the knuckles in a grid pattern, rested casually on the rusted edge of an alternator.

"Either crawl out yourself..."

The fingers tapped twice. Thud-thud.

"...or I’m taking the whole heap for scrap weight."

Heavy boots crunched up the slope.

Krr-shhh.

Oxidized copper plates shifted under the weight, sliding down in a jagged cascade. The anonymous hand didn’t hesitate.

It hooked under the rim of a hollow zinc casing:

Screee-thwack... and tossed it over the shoulder into the dark.

Another plate peeled back. A warped alternator rolled away.

Clatter-tink.

No face in the gray shaft yet. Just the broad, dark bulk blotting out the street-mud light.

The final sheet lifted off.

A heavy, rusted exhaust pipe rolled aside with a dull, hollow thud.

There.

Tucked in the hollow depression of the grease-slick floor, Fukuro was still locked hard in his snail-coil.

Knees jammed against his teeth. Palms glued to his ears.

His whole frame vibrated with a rapid, violent, high-frequency stutter---

brrr-t-t-t-t

Like a loose wire shorting out against a live battery.

His eyes were squeezed shut so tight the skin around his round wire-rims had turned bruised violet.

Not a breath. Not a sound.

Just the white-knuckle silence of a rat waiting for the heel to drop.

The heavy, gravel-grated voice dropped into the trench... flat, unimpressed, and tasting of old iron.

"A human."

Not a question. Not a threat. Just a diagnosis.